what death is doing to us.

“Do not be alarmed.  You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, the one who was crucified.  He has been raised; he is not here.  Look the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he goes ahead of you to Galilee.  There you will see him, just as he told you.” 

Afraid,grief-stricken, and alone you stand before your best friend’s grave.  Gone too soon.  How did it happen?  Your memories take you back to your first date, your wedding day, the birth of your first child, the birth of your second, the broken bones, lost teeth, games and concerts, that trip to…  the day the diagnosis came, the surgeries, those six good months before those seven bad weeks.  And then there was the funeral and the good-intentioned people.  Friends and family.  You are fortunate to have them.  You don’t know if work would make this easier or harder.  You don’t know exactly what to do next.  You are paralyzed, standing in front of the gravestone. There is this place inside you that seems empty, dark, cold.  Like something has been physically removed from your body.  You haven’t been able to listen to music or eat much of anything.  You left the plants to die.  But the house is clean and the grass is mowed.  Others have taken care of that.  You think, when we married we knew this day would come.  No one lives forever.  Someone was going to die first and the other was going to suffer through it.  It could’ve been you and you’ve wished it were you, especially when the pain seemed unbearable.  But now you are glad you are suffering and he is at peace, only because you wouldn’t want this to be how he feels.  You would weep, if there were any tears left. 

In a tent in a village in the sweat and heat of the morning the doctor pronounces that she has died.  You hold her frail body in your arms and you weep uncontrollably.  The medicine came too late.  In  two weeks, the disease stole her from you.  Her weak, undernourished body could not fight the parasitic infection that attacked her heart and lungs.  She would turn six next week.  She was looking forward to starting school, since your family had recently received assistance that would allow her to attend.  Even as you hold her dead body in your arms, you worry about her little brother; he is three and may already have Malaria.  You cannot lose them both.  You have seen what happens to the mothers who have lost all of their children.  How their life seems to drain away from them and they become incapacitated by grief. You pray for his protection, even as you pray for God to take your daughter to heaven.

What is death doing to you?  What toll has it taken?  What threat does it continue to pose?  Death is indiscriminate, universal, and personal.  It hurts us.  We use the threat and power of death as a weapon, as a mechanism of control, as a means to achieve other ends. We kill enemies to avoid being killed.  We try to take shelter from it, but it is senseless and merciless. Death threatens to annihilate the meaning of life.  The brevity of life causes us to ask why.  We flee from death, knowing we cannot escape it. Most of us were not alive 100 years ago.  We will not be alive 100 years from now.  We are part of the story, the human story, the earth story, the story of life.   

       They believed that he was sent by God to be the servant King of Israel.  They believed that he would change everything, that God’s power was at work in his hands, God’s promises and commands in his speech.  They believed he was sent to save them from the powers of sin, injustice, and death.  They believed he could protect them, heal them, give them life.  Nothing in their experience with him or their emerging belief about him prepared them to accept his death.  Even the crucifixion itself was not a necessary end.  He could come down, save himself.  He could conquer, overcome, transcend.  He was greater than their cross.  But then he was dead.  And buried in a new tomb, guarded and enshrouded for three days.

I have prayed for this miracle.  Perhaps they had prayed for it too.  No.  They could not have done so, because death is final. Always has been. Dead people do not come back to life.  Maybe someday, with the end of the world.  Or maybe they go to heaven.  But they don’t come back to life.  Right? 

Then there is a 1^st century news flash:  Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead.  People saw him.  He lives.  The first of all who have died.  Easter is good news because we are surrounded and bordered by death, threatening the living in so many ways.  Our actions are predicated by our experience with death. The limits of mortality, the limitations of our physical bodies, and the constraints of time dictate our days.  We long to be free.  We long for the eternal, for constancy, for the unfading.  We long to have restored what or who has been lost, taken, stolen from us.  We long for resurrection.  And then it happens.  Life breaks forth, where death had done its deed.  Life breaks out of the prison of the grave.  Life breaks the bonds that hold us down. 

Easter is for you and for me.  It is the promise from God the creator that life is eternal and death is temporary, because love is stronger than hate, and peace is stronger than violence.  Because God has said it is so and demonstrated that it is so by the resurrection of His Son. Come and hear the story that makes every story good.  The story of how life wins.  Amen.